Sowing the Seeds of Open Source Advocacy

Aristotle was a confused yet accomplished man. As someone who demonstrated
incredible understanding of philosophy, his efforts typically hinged around
expressing abstract concepts to people in a language they understood. With a
portfolio of such complex topics, Aristotle developed better ways in which he
could express his views; he didn't just work on the content of his message, but
he worked on how he delivered his message, too.

Although Aristotle developed his message many, many years ago, the concept
of optimizing how we talk to people has developed further throughout history.
From Aristotle to Heraclitus to Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Keller to George
Bernard Shaw, many people have advocated new thinking in times of rabid
opposition. One of the most famous advocates of new thinking was the civil
rights activist Martin Luther King, who summed up the challenge by saying, "The
ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and
convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

Although it is wrong to insinuate that open source advocacy is as important
as civil rights, open source shares some ties with these other advocates. From
the ethical standpoint of free software to the task of challenging established
thinking, it is useful not only to learn from the contemporary advocates of
today, such as Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, and Richard Stallman, but also to
explore how people such as Martin Luther King approached the challenge.

The Importance of the Message

Within the open source community, advocacy is as critical as contributing
source code, patches, or documentation. Although advocacy is not a technical
contribution, it is critically important to spread the message of open source
to other people in a language that is cohesive to their context. It is easy to
preach to the converted when advocating open source to people at Linux user
groups and trade shows, but standing in front of a board of executives who care
little about computers--let alone a facet of computers, such as open source--is
quite a challenge.

One of the most eloquent examples of an advocate speaking in the right
language is that of Dr. Edgar Villanueva. As a Peruvian congressman, Villanueva
faced a stiff and
critical letter from Microsoft Peru regarding the government's increasing
interest in open source. Villanueva wrote a stunningly crafted response to the
letter that demonstrated a consistent understanding of the issues presented
in an ordered, logical form. The beauty of Villanueva's letter was not just as
a well-considered document, but that in the evidence that he had explored, he used
the most appropriate language to rebut Microsoft's points. This language
undoubtedly helped the subsequent success of open source in his country.

Another interesting feature of Villanueva's letter is its use of factually
representative content that specifically sought to clarify critical points.
This technique is essential in developing your message, and you should back up
all of your points with factually honest information. These facts add more
value to your message and give the reader the view that A) you know your
subject well, and B) that open source is a proven technology. Consider a
simple example. Imagine that you send an email to an MP in the U.K. to discuss
how open source is important. You could include this sentence:

Open source has proven to be useful in government, and more and
more government organizations are using open source.

To add more impact, replace it with this:

Open source has proven to be useful in government, and a recent
report commissioned by the Office of Government Commerce cited open source as
"viable" (http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?docid=2190). This has spurred on the
take up of open source in councils such as Dundee Council, where open source has
involved substantial cost savings and stability/consolidation
improvements.

The second version not only puts across the message that open source has
increased in use, but it also validates the statement by mentioning an official
report by a third party.

A feature of both of these sentences is that the language is clear and
applicable to the reader. One school of thought believes that a writer should
write in a style that is applicable to the audience; stories are descriptive,
kids read simple language, and bureaucrats read bureaucratic prose. This is
generally true, apart from the bureaucratic context. William Zinsser, an
established language teacher and author of On Writing Well, says that "just
because people work for an institution, they don't have to write like one.
Institutions can be warmed up. Administrators can be turned into human beings.
Information can be imparted clearly and without pomposity" (On Writing Well, p. 167). This skill is critical in developing the tone and
authenticity of your message. I recommend that you read On Writing Well or
listen to the fantastic audiobook of it that Zinsser himself reads. He is a very
inspiring and interesting teacher.

Before moving on, I want to write a few words about research and statistical
information. Research and statistics are crucial to your message, but the
source of the information is just as crucial. If, for example, you are targeting
a large organization with a complex managerial structure, it is likely that
there will be a culture of managers impressing managers. With this in mind,
research needs to come from established organizations such as government
agencies, objective research institutions, universities, and professors. Within
this targeted audience, educational chops play a real role. On the other hand,
if you are targeting a small business, real-world information will more likely
be of interest. In this case, usage/skills statistics, press, similarly-sized
case studies, and awards may have more impact. In a smaller organization, the
focus is more typically on technical ability and costs, as opposed to the
political issues encountered in larger corporate environments.

Approaching the Task

With your message crafted, it is possible to advocate in one of two
fundamental ways. First, you can go for a more marketing-inspired,
blanket-driven approach, in which you send out a general message to many people.
This kind of approach has seen great success in the Spread Firefox and Infopoint projects, but the
challenge with blanket advocacy is the need to be very careful in how you craft
your message. This is because it will have a very generic application in
multiple contexts you will be unaware of. A future article will discuss this
approach.

The second approach is more involved with specific consultancy and promotion
of open source in a particular company, organization, or education institution.
With this method, you have the twin tasks of understanding a specific IT
infrastructure or problem and of developing an idea of how open source can solve
these problems. There are three main parts to this:

Make your colleagues understand what open source is.

Make them understand how it can be useful for them.

Determine the best method in which to use open source software in the
organization.

Within this method, your involvement can take on one of two further paths;
internal or external consultancy. In the latter approach, you are advocating
open source to a specific organization or sector that does not already employ
or know you. The first goal here is to garner the attention of the company and
convince them to take you seriously. This is always tough, because so many
people who cold-call a company to express the benefits of a particular software
tool or system are selling a product. Once again, your identity can cause your
options to fork. IBM sending a team of salesmen around to a large organization
to preach, over an expensive meal in an expensive restaurant, how their products
can help will have more impact than a single person approaching them.
This is largely because of the business culture of big business. If the same
two sets of people were to approach a smaller startup, the opposite might
occur.

Some people refer to internal advocacy from the inside out as guerrilla
evangelism. In many ways, this method offers the greatest opportunity (people
inside the company know and trust you), but it can also offer the greatest
personal risk. If you apply an incorrect level of advocacy, there is the
unfortunate chance that you will hear people utter things like "Damn, Joe
is going on about Linux again." With this in mind, it is important that you
understand from the outset that no one likes an evangelist, mainly because the
interpretation of evangelism is that it is just blatant salesmanship. This is
where the "guerrilla" part of guerilla evangelism kicks in. Your nominal goal is
to make yourself known as someone who understands open source and who can offer
realistic advice on how to best use open source.

When you are in a guerrilla evangelism role, you also have the challenge of
percolating through the hierarchy of managers. You may not know the person who
makes the decisions for IT in your organization very well, or at all, let alone
have any influence on this person. You could theoretically go straight to the
top and explain open source, but will this person take you seriously; would the
President of the United States take advice from a civil servant?

Moving on

This article has provided a bird's-eye perspective on the issues of open
source advocacy. These higher-level issues are fundamental in understanding
the devil in the detail. In future columns, I will explain some of the ways in
how you can advocate open source in a well-considered and intelligent manner.
This process does not only involve understanding the open source community, but
also understanding the business community and purely how people tick. Aristotle
seemed to have a spookily accurate interpretation of how to develop as an
advocate, and he was fundamentally correct when he stated, "It is possible to
fail in many ways ... while to succeed is possible only in one way."

Jono Bacon
is an award-winning leading community manager, author and consultant, who has authored four
books and acted as a consultant to a range of technology companies. Bacon's weblog (http://www.jonobacon.org/) is one of the widest read Open Source weblogs.